Mar 16, 2015

Unhealthy diets contribute to more than 11 million deaths a year. This means it is now a bigger killer than tobacco. Obesity alone is estimated to cost $2 trillion per year. And this isn’t just a ‘rich world’ problem - some of the biggest increases in diet-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and some cancers are in developing countries.

CI Members around the world will be staging campaign actions to draw attention to the difficulties faced by consumers in choosing healthy diets.

It really is time the world woke up to the price of unhealthy diets.

Consumers International and the global consumer rights movement are calling for the World Health Organisation (WHO) to develop a global treaty to support consumers’ rights to healthy food. A global treaty would:

Mar 10, 2015

This is to inform you that the country profile for Mauritius is accessible on the following website, http://fao.org/gm-platform. The platform is to share information on safety assessment of foods derived from recombinant-DNA plants authorized in accordance with the Codex “Guideline for the conduct of food safety assessment of foods derived from recombinant-DNA plants (CAC/GL 45-2003, annex III adopted in 2008)". This Platform also facilitates the effective utilization of food safety assessment in situations of Low Level Presence (LLP) of r-DNA plant materials in food.

The FAO GM Foods Platform is freely accessible for those who want to browse the information with the Codex guideline CAC/GL 45-2003, annex III adopted in 2008.

All relevant information can be forwarded to the focal points of the following mail address: gmfoodplatformmru@gmail.com. Please note that the contributor is responsible for the correctness of the submitted information and thus every effort should be made to provide quality and reviewed information. A format with details on information to be provided is hereby annexed for ease of use.

Mar 9, 2015

On Tuesday 7 April 2015, WHO will celebrate its main annual advocacy event - World Health Day (WHD) - with “food safety” as the theme. The occasion also marks the World Health Organization’s birthday. The main focus of this event will be to demonstrate the importance of food safety along the whole length of the food chain in a globalised world, from production and transport, to preparation and consumption.

Background

Unsafe food is linked to the deaths of an estimated 2 million people annually – including many children. Food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances is responsible for more than 200 diseases, ranging from diarrhoea to cancers.

New threats to food safety are constantly emerging. Changes in food production, distribution and consumption; changes to the environment; new and emerging pathogens; antimicrobial resistance - all pose challenges to national food safety systems. Increases in travel and trade enhance the likelihood that contamination can spread internationally.

The topic for World Health Day 2015 is food safety

As our food supply becomes increasingly globalized, the need to strengthen food safety systems in and between all countries is becoming more and more evident. That is why the WHO is promoting efforts to improve food safety, from farm to plate (and everywhere in between) on World Health Day, 7 April 2015.

WHO helps countries prevent, detect and respond to foodborne disease outbreaks - in line with the Codex Alimentarius, a collection of international food standards, guidelines and codes of practice covering all the main foods and processes. Together with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), WHO alerts countries to food safety emergencies through an international information network. Details and more information are available on this page -http://www.who.int/campaigns/world-health-day/2015/event/en

Mar 4, 2015

Over the course of the last century, our planet has become warmer but in particular over the last 50 years it is now recognized that human activities are largely responsible for this warming. Watch this video for an EU funded project for the African continent.

Jan 26, 2015

Last year, FAO invited PhD students and young researchers from developing countries, working in the area of animal nutrition, to participate in a video competition and to share information on promising animal nutrition technologies or interventions that will contribute to improved feeding of livestock.

The purpose of conducting the competition was to:

i) promote research focusing on the needs of smallholder farmers,

ii) enhance South-South knowledge exchange and transfer, and

iii) facilitate identification of technologies and interventions that have potential for replication and upscaling.

A set of 11 selected Videos from the competition can be accessed at the FAO You Tube website. One of the videos is posted below.

The focus of the strategies, demonstrated in the videos, is on smallholder farmers; and their application increases livestock productivity and income of farmers. The strategies can bey replicated in other parts of the world and have potential to lift poor farmers out of povert.

The videos will be useful to Farmers, Extension Services, Non-Governmental Organizations, , Livestock development agencies/departments and Research Institutions.

Jan 12, 2015

Cereal-based farming systems must join the transition to sustainable agriculture if they are to meet unprecedented demand for maize, rice and wheat. That was one of the key messages to emerge from a crop specialist meeting held by FAO last December. FAO: raw material production must become more sustainable FAO estimates that over the next 35 years farmers will need to increase the annual production of maize, rice and wheat to 3 billion tonnes, or half a billion tonnes more than 2013's record combined harvests. They will need to do that with less water, fossil fuel and agrochemicals, on farmland that has been widely degraded by decades of intensive crop production, and in the face of droughts, new pest and disease threats, and extreme weather events provoked by climate change.

Maize, rice and wheat are fundamental crops
Experts at the meeting said that the challenge could only be met with eco-friendly agriculture that achieves higher productivity while conserving natural resources, adapting to climate change, and delivering economic benefits to the world's 500 million small-scale family farms. The meeting focused on maize, rice and wheat because those three crops are fundamental to world food security, providing 50% of humanity's dietary energy supply. Cereals are also increasingly vulnerable: climate trends since 1980 have reduced the annual global maize harvest by an estimated 23 million tonnes and the wheat harvest by 33 million tonnes. Green Revolution cereal yield increases, once averaging a spectacular 3% a year, have fallen to around 1% since 2000. In Asia, the degradation of soils and the buildup of toxins in intensive paddy systems have raised concerns that the slowdown in yield growth reflects a deteriorating crop-growing environment.

A series of 13 FAO educational videos about family poultry production is now available at their YouTube site.

The family poultry playlist includes videos that provide information about a variety of topics related to family poultry production. They address the role and function of family poultry production as well as technical aspects of production like the feeding in four different production systems, the prevention and control of diseases and economic assessment. The videos are made for self study and for use in training of extension staffs.

Dec 29, 2014

Students currently following a Masters course at FoA and currently registered MPhil/PhD students can also benefit from this opportunity if relevant to their field of study.

Kindly note that students currently registered for a Masters course at UoM or an MPhil/PhD in a field related to management, marketing, entrepreneurship, business management are also encouraged to apply.

Periods abroad for Masters students: 6 months (follow modules in a Masters course in the partner university) and can include an industry placement upon request.

Students can also opt follow a Masters programme in a partner university for 12 months and mobility should start at most in September 2015 or before.

Periods abroad for PhD students: up to 18 months but mobility should start at most in April 2015 or before.

Dec 20, 2014

CGSpace is a collaboration of several centers and research programs. It is hosted by the International Livestock Research Institute. It is a repository of agricultural research outputs and results produced by different parts of CGIAR and partners.

It indexes reports, articles, press releases, presentations, videos, policy briefs and more. Visit the community of your choice; search across the whole site; sign up for email alerts and newsfeeds on topics or groups that interest you. Recently, CTA has joined as a member of the GCSpace and is making its archived materials openly accessible through the GCSpace as a shared open platform.Check Link Here